A Way of Love
by BeaBae
Summary: It is when Mikasa is nine, and there are three grown men pulling up her dress, that she first realizes she has never cared before what is beneath a person's clothes. - A collection of short scenes, reflections on Mikasa as an asexual woman. Non graphic references to canon violence, sexual assault and deaths.


**Though non-graphic, all standard warnings for Mikasa's past and standard snk warnings (referenced sexual violence, violent violence, death, etc. ) apply.**

**SNK is property of Isamaya Hajime.**

001

It takes her so long to realize what Jean wants.

"Your hair is really beautiful, Mikasa" Jean says, leaning to one side, grinning and not-winking, but perhaps mentally winking. Her hackles rose. Her skin crawled. She was suddenly so, so very horribly aware of her breasts and her ass. It had taken her so long to realize what he wanted.

(But perhaps that wasn't what he wanted? She looked to Armin discretely. Armin made a face, shrugged helplessly mouthed a word which Mikasa didn't quite catch. )

Eren, perhaps only hearing half of what Jean says, as a moment later—arms up behind his head, stretching back far enough that Mikasa can hear his back crack—"You're hair's getting pretty long, isn't it, Mikasa? You should probably cut it soon."

_Thank you Eren, thank you,_she thinks, even though she knows Eren does not know what he has done. Mikasa seizes the opportunity that night, before anyone else can tell her she is beautiful. She raises her sword up to the back of the neck and cut off the hair Jean thinks is so beautiful he would bone her for it.

Her hair comes out in a clump. She had been starting to look like her mother. Her hair litters the ground.

People mumble the day after when she comes out of the barracks, her hair cropped at her neck. She finds Armin in the morning who looks at her like a stranger, but still walks beside her easily. Was hair so important?

Jean takes it worse. She can tell, though she doesn't speak to him about it. He stares at her across the dining hall with wide eyes. Jean and Eren fight more than usual that day. Though there is only so much pity she can spare for others, she spares Jean a shred. Perhaps she misunderstood his intentions.

It is so easy to misunderstand.

002

The Talk had been Mikasa's orientation to Eren's family. Her new family. Her second family. One she loved very much.

She had told Mr. and Ms. Jaeger about that last day, and the topic her parents had never told her about, and Ms. and Mr. Jaeger decided the best way to bring Mikasa into the family was to explain the thing that her biological family never had the chance to.

That evening, when she first slept in her new bed beside her new brother, she was grateful. Grateful that her last memory in her first family had not been that conversation, and that her first memory in her new family was of Eren.

003

The night is so cold Mikasa's breath comes out of her nostrils like smoke. Her legs quake a deep quake, all the way up through her thighs and up her spine, into her shoulders. Her fingers went numb long before the bells sounded the last hour.

"Armin," Mikasa says, hissing through her teeth and gently shaking Armin's shoulder. "Armin, wake up."

"Mikasa?" Armin rolls over as he wakes, groaning and rubbing his eyes. "What's wrong?"

She can see the initial shiver go through his body as he realizes how cold the night is on his arms. The only light in the male side of the barracks came from the moon and stars through the window. The lights spread across the floor like creeping tigers.

"I'm cold," Mikasa says. Armin blinks at her. It's hard to see in the dim light.

"Aren't you and Annie sharing a bunk?"

"She's frigid."

"Eren's hogging most of the covers again," Armin says a moment later. "You can try to squeeze in between us."

Mikasa nods. They shuffle around, trying to keep quiet enough so as to not wake the other residents of the barracks. After a minute or so of carefully climbing over and under each other, Mikasa slides her feet under the covers—her socks and stockings still on in a vain attempt to combat the chill—and snuggles down between her two boys.

Eren wakes, or at least wakes partway. He is conscious long enough to mumble, "coldmmheet," before rolling over and trying to recover his comfortable position. He didn't appear to be successful, as he kept shifting around and moving as Mikasa also fought to make her comfortable spot under the covers.

They shift—snuggling closer together and shying away from the cold edges of the bed while trying to ignore the chill from Mikasa's slowly heating body—until they press up against each other, tangling in a mess until only Mikasa, in the middle of the tangle, knows who went where and how close.

That was Armin's nose at the nape of her neck. Those were Eren's fingers on her elbow. Those were Armin's kneecaps bumping against her own. That was Eren's crotch pressed against her leg.

It is innocent. He is sleeping. She knows this.

Still, she twists around again to press herself closer to Armin, who grunts, but remains where he is. It gains her those precious few centimeters of space she needs.

It felt silly. Mikasa still dreams about the death of her parents. She had seen the death of her comrades. She had killed titans. It felt silly, therefore, that she could not stand the thought of her vagina or a penis. It would have been better for an empty spot— a small whole whose only function was expulsion— than to have to bear with genitalia. She knew it was silly. It didn't make her discomfort any less real.

Mikasa had seen Eren masturbate once. Their old home, Mikasa's second home, where they were siblings, had only one bathroom. That bathroom contained no sort of lock.

She wasn't mad at him. It was hard to be mad at what people apparently always did. She froze then too, though, on that spot in the door where her feet had grown roots as deep as the oldest of hardwood trees. Like lightning had entered the top of her head and surged down through her body, shorted out her nerves and left her feeling uncomfortably numb. Her eyes separated from her body, staring, staring, trying to process the reality that Eren had a _dick_and was _holding it in his hand_. She had shuffled back to her bedroom, lifted her skirt, and stared at her pubic hair, trying to comprehend a touch there.

Mikasa is so glad Eren's titan form had no genitalia.

She is less glad that she now has to fall asleep, snuggled between Armin and Eren, with the image of Eren's nonexistent titan dick in her mind.

She runs her fingers through Eren and Armin's hair as they begin to doze. Her fingers slid through Armin's far more easily than they did through Eren's thick rats' nests. Both her boys snuggle close, their noses pressing into the front her shoulder and her back. With her eyes open, she can see their breath being blown out like steam. Her ears are still cold. She can very faintly see the darkest red tinge about Eren's ear cleft.

Reiner knew how to knit, if she remembers correctly.  
Perhaps she would ask him to help her make hats. Night caps for them to keep their ears warm with on the coldest nights.

As she planned the colors to suggest and patterns to use, sleep came easier: warm and dark.

004

Sometimes, in the early mornings in the streets, while the air is still cold and the morning sun shines, sharp and clear, casting shadows like flint, Mikasa looks at Eren and sees the sun light up the corners of his eyes and outline his nose, color his hair and skin deep, warm brown—and she can't help but feel the warmth of the sun and the sharp cool of the early morning on her cheeks at the same time. It made it impossible to not look at Eren and wonder at the thought: _you so important to me._

005

Sometimes, Mikasa dreams.

Sometimes, the dreams are of her mothers.

Carla Yaeger and her biological mother— her mother of nine years, her mother with whom she shared a nose and hair and eyes, her mother who died lunging is trapped under the house as Carla, and the grinning Titan reaching down to pluck her mother from the rubble has a long, erect penis— when Carla screams, she is screaming, "fuck off!"

Then, the Titan reaches for the rest of her family.

Mikasa watches, clad in nothing but her long white nightgown and a single saber in her hand. The rest of her nightmare is spent slashing the probing fingers wrapping around Eren and Armin while the Titans—now swarming—tower far above her head, whispering of the price her family could fetch on the market, if only they didn't struggle so much. If only her family didn't make the Titans hurt them. They could fetch such a good price on the meat market.

006

She is kicked out of the men's barracks each morning, and eventually threatened to be kicked out of the military altogether if she continues to breach the code of conduct. In a world like theirs with her capabilities, there is little she couldn't get away with, but the threat of pregnancy is too great to allow the genders to mingle too much.

There is no threat of pregnancy though. She tries to explain this to her superiors. She tries to say that she, Eren, and Armin are just friends. She doesn't say that the thought of Armin getting naked with someone sends her rolling in disgust. She doesn't say that she only feels secure at night when she knows for a fact Armin and Eren are still in arm's reach, still close enough to protect. She doesn't say that she wants Eren to say that they're a couple. She doesn't say she wants him to hold her hand. She doesn't say that she wants a date with him where they go out and lean on each other's shoulders, where they wander around town together for hours, where they just talk and go back to base and cuddle afterwards in the barracks.

The only threat of pregnancy would be an assault. In the event Mikasa does not behead her attacker, she expects someone else to for her. If the military does not carry out the execution, then she can rest in the certainty that Eren will. He had proven himself before, back when they were strangers. She can have no room for doubt when they are now friends, adopted siblings. It would be the same if they were also a couple.

She does not say these things because she knows that they will not understand. They will pull out the rulebook and say that if they gave her an exception, they would have to give all the other trainees with lovers an exception. Then, Mikasa would have to deal with Hannah and Franz mashing face in the bunk in the corner.

She didn't care that Hannah and Franz mashed faces. She just wished they would do it where she didn't have to see.

She wonders if others feel the same about her desire to, to _hold_. To be with. To lay her head on Eren's shoulder and have him run fingers through her hair. She had told Armin, once of her feelings, and Armin had nodded and smiled and told her to let him know if she ever wanted privacy with Eren. She got the distinct feeling he was expecting her to do something other than what she meant, but at least Armin had not made faces at her. Had not told her she was wrong to love her brother in the share-the-same-bed kind of way.

Perhaps others would understand as well. Perhaps everyone would, if she could gather up the courage to tell. Feelings were more difficult than battle, and so she wonders if her mother—her biological mother who died telling the world to fuck itself— would be disappointed that Mikasa had no intention of carrying on her clan's legacy. If she would be disappointed that Mikasa had no intention of baring anyone's children. Not even Eren's.

Mikasa is so lost in the thoughts swarming her mind that she didn't say that to the officer to handed her the warning notice with a stern look on his face and a, "this isn't up for discussion," when she remembers to protest.

She doesn't say much. She stops going to the male barracks out of fear of being kicked out of the military. Eren and Armin would not survive without her.

She spends her nights alone.

The Scouting Legion is far less strict about their fraternization rules. She finds that within a few weeks, the gender binary barrackses break down completely, and Sasha is playing cards with Connie all night. Krista and Ymir are shooting shit with Bertholdt and Reiner. Armin and Eren welcome her back to their cot with sighs, snuggles, and full-body pajamas.

It is warm between them.

007

Sometimes, Mikasa dreams.

She remembers Armin's book. The book about the outside world. The Flaming Water. The Land Made of Ice. The Fields of Sand. The Ocean.

She dreams about the book.

She, Armin and Eren are in a long, cavernous area, the likes of which Mikasa had never been to in person. The rocks are orange and tower above their heads, shaped by Armin's word of _erosion_, the passage of time and the chipping-away work of the rainbow waterfalls which frame the cavern of mirrors. And there is a room filled with pillows in the cavern, where they sit, and they are naked. Eren and Mikasa, pressed together like so many childhood nights. While they rest, Mikasa's head on Eren's shoulder and Eren's head on Mikasa's, their arms wrapped together, their hips pressed close, and nothing is going in, or threatening to, or covered in fluid. It is all so wonderfully warm and dry in their room despite the spraying waterfalls outside—while they sit there, in the room of soft red pillows and rainbow waterfalls beyond their chamber, Armin kneels on the floor with a book, telling them of the place where all the waterfalls will eventually go—the Ocean.

"Then if we follow the waterfalls, we'll get to the Ocean?" Eren asks.

"Yes," says Armin.

"So why don't we go now?" Eren asks.

"You two are too comfortable. But we could," says Armin. "We could go anywhere if we want to."

"I'm comfortable," Mikasa says, and both boys look to her, and they look at her face because there is no other part of her body which matters. "But I would like to go."

"I wish the Ocean was right outside our door," says Eren.

"But then we wouldn't get to see everything on our way," says Armin.

"We should take a trip," says Mikasa. "We should just get up and go. We should go to the Ocean all on our own. Who's going to stop us or tell us no?"

And they go to the Ocean.

008

It is a simple thing, Mikasa thinks. Love.

It is simplest when she and Eren sit together, their legs dangling off the edge of the horse-drawn carts. Bumps and rocks in the road send their shoulders knocking against each other. Eren has put his hand on top of her own and, for the fifth time, they apologize for bumping into each others' sides.

It is summer. The sun above them is warm. A raincloud looms just over the edge of Wall Maria, ready to approach in the night, to be gathered by rain barrels, to grow the autumn crops.

It is a simple thing, love, when it is like this.

**A/N:**

**I finally gave in and google imaged pubic hair and oh god ugh god oh no so much genetalia no ew ew**

**(hahaha**

**but no, seriously now: this fic was written partly so I'd have an excuse to make a collection called "asexual relationfics" but also because of the lack of diverse asexual rep. in the fanfic world. And also because I love Mikasa. Mikasa is great. Hail the Queen. Write her more fic. )**


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